August 3, 2001

We began the day by taking down the area in L1032 which we believed is just fill, the area in the far north of the locus, the area just north of the bricks which appear laid down diagonally in the trench. We did this to try to better understand the relationship between the large wall and the diagonal bricks. We went down about 10 cm, making it level with the locus L1034, the locus next to it. Not much was found in this area, and at this elevation it appears to be merely fill, nothing vital was chopped down.

We next spent a good part of the morning straightening baulks, as our baulks had gotten to be unwieldy and it was becoming increasingly difficult to pick up features, bricks, etc. in the baulk. We spent over an hour straightening baulks and making sure that the plum bob dropped down straight and hung without hitting the baulks.

We next began digging down in our mini sounding in the L1034 in the far northwest corner of the trench. We had taken down the area 15 cm yesterday in an attempt to see if anything was going on in relation to the large wall locus L1033, and also to see if we could catch the wall in section. Today we decided to go down another 25 to make it an even 40. However, on the first big pick pass of the day Erdal threw in his pick and took it out with a fine black ash on it. At this point we decided to go down the distance of the first pick pass, only about 8 cm, and then clean up to see what exactly was going on with this dark black ash. After we cleaned up the area we were left with a large black ash layer, maybe a pit, maybe a black surface, with some yellow streaks in it. This new surface, layer, whatever it is, is fascinating. We started a new locus, as this was an obvious change in the dirt, from relatively hard brown to dark black ash. This new locus is L1037.

Oh, we also went down about 5 cm in L1028. Not much going on there at this time as it still appears to be fill.

But now we can go across the trench and see how far the black ash layer continues underneath already existing loci.